Some of the tension faded from Shipman. He smiled, a cold, cynical smile. “I see,” he said. “In other words, you want money.”

“As a matter of fact,” the young man said, “no. We’ll need your acknowledged support now, and your financial support eventually—because this sort of work can’t be done without capital. But I certainly don’t expect you to take what I’ve said on faith. I don’t want a penny from you now.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Just this. Mr. Shipman, I’m going to go to the people of Caxton, from house to house. I’m going to introduce myself and tell them about SNAP; and then I’m going to ask them if they want to join the organization. If they do, it will cost them ten dollars membership fee. That’s all. When I get fifteen hundred dollars, then I’ll come back here and ask you to triple that amount. But—this could be a cagey little move, too, couldn’t it? That is, you’re thinking I could already have the fifteen hundred and just wait a while and come back with my song-and-dance. Maybe you’d believe I actually did raise the money, maybe you’d trust me and go along with the idea; then maybe I’d sort of disappear. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

“Maybe.”

“So we’ll work it another way. When I raise my part of it, I’ll turn it in to you. And you’ll know exactly where I got it and from whom. You’ll hold the money in your bank and simply guarantee SNAP the rest, as it’s needed.”

“That would make me treasurer,” Shipman said.

The young man grinned. “That’s right,” he said. “It would.”

“I . . . don’t know; I’ll have to think a good deal more about it. We’ve had the best lawyers in the state on our side, you know, and they couldn’t do anything.”

“That’s no surprise, believe me. Lawyers are mostly fools: they work on entirely the wrong principle. Who do they talk to? Politicians. Officials. Bureaucrats. Judges. If you wanted to make your way through a jungle, Mr. Shipman, what would you do—try to talk the bushes into going somewhere else, or hire yourself some people to go out and cut those bushes away? I mean, did your lawyers ever once go to the people and enlist their aid?”

“I don’t think that’s the point.”

“Of course it’s the point. It’s why they failed. We don’t work that way; we know a lot better than to try to buck the red tape thrown around by all those government Jews. They’re a minority race themselves, don’t you see, that’s one of the reasons they’re so damned anxious to desegregate the South!”